A Red Fox

I went out to shovel on my first day up this week (my fourth week), and I found the fox trotting toward me at the main entrance! She came right up and said hello, coming almost a foot from me. She gets fed a few scraps, so she comes up for visits in the winter. Her coat was full, vibrant, and beautiful!


Looking out north to the North Presidentials


Another view of the North Presis


The fox looking at the mountains

...Must have been a raven over there

Sniffing for food. Just to the left of her is the door where food is often left

Trotting toward food

She was unbelievably friendly! I could have touched her.

Week Three Photos

Here are the pictures from my third week, finally! We had a really calm first few days, then quite stormy --then back to really calm again. The winds at either end of the week were almost at zero, and temperatures well above zero. The conditions created some great rime ice!

We also had a group of German students up this week, doing research on the summit. They were from two universities --one in Berlin, and the other called the University Ruhr. They were a lot of fun to have around for the second half of our week, and I was sad to say goodbye. Fortunately, the weather was so bad the second half of their week that some of them stayed until the cat could make it up --when we came back up!

Left to right: Eva, Sebastian, Torban, Lisa, Nikola, Marcel (stayed several weeks!), and Peter in front. This is the group of German students who stuck it out on the mountain top, while the others hiked down a few days earlier.

All the cute little observers, taking a photo opp for some official reason... left to right: Brian Clark (my shift), Steve (the Brit from the other shift), Mike Carmen (a former intern, now the night observer on the other shift), Mike Finnegan (on my shift), and in front Stacey Kawecki (on the other shift), and Ryan Knapp (the night guy on my shift).

Another take of the observers' photo; left to right: Mike Carmen, Steve, Mike; in front: Stacey, Ryan, Brian.

The North Presis in the morning from the summit... I don't think I actually took this picture.

Undercast skies, looking northwest toward Mount Clay

Snowflakes on the floor of the A-Frame outside the obs deck door

Our snowman, Rimey, outside the A-Frame at sunset (minus his nose and pipe)

Sunset over the west end of the obs deck, with John Bauhs, our volunteer, in the tower

John flying in the turret of the tower

Cap clouds over the north presis at sunset

Clouds forming on the summit, looking to the west from the obs deck

Our heat vent, looking south

Rime spikes looking west toward the tower

Rime spikes against a patchy sky

Feathery rime formations on the obs deck railing

Rime feathers along the obs deck railing

Rime ice on the observation deck --unusually feathery in warm, calm weather

Looking north

A leafy pattern in the rime ice, on the side of our heat vent

Looking northwest on the deck

Up close

Mountain Soundtrack, Part I

Thought I'd post some of the music that I've been listening to (and trying to play on guitar, too). Here's my playlist, part one.

Week Three, Minus the Pictures...

Summit in white, Dylan of Workaholics, Inc.

I left my pictures on the summit! Got some really wonderful pictures this week, and had some amazing experiences.

We rode up in the new snow cat, which has much bigger windows and comfier seats. Mike also brought a guitar up to the summit, so I learned how to change strings and played a little blues. We watched a video with Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee which is pretty cool and a nice inspiration for anyone looking to learn the harp.

Our volunteers were Win Dodge, a very athletic and hilarious fellow with excellent pie-making skills, and John Bauhs, a witty personal chef who's served some very big names (the MWO observers, of course, are the most significant). We also had a group of German geography students from Ruhr and Berlin Universities up to the summit to do some research projects and see the mountain. Very cool people, good soccer players, and creative with shopping carts in parking lots...

We had some spectacular weather as well --at the beginning of the week, crazy rime ice that looked just like feathers and the spikes on a gothic cathedral. We built a snowman, Rimey, with the beautiful, fluffy snow that was on the deck. He survived the big storm which followed, although he lost his carrot nose and pipe. Winds increased to almost 120 mph and temperatures plummetted. The pitot anemometer kept getting ice into the tube, so that we had to go up to the tower and pump it out every hour for quite a while. When the storm passed, we were left with gorgeous weather --almost no winds, temperatures at around ten above zero, and little snow flurries with perfect dendrites from blue skies.

I took two hikes in the last couple days: one just down the hill to watch one of three fabulous sunsets over undercast skies, and another over to Mt. Clay to watch another of the sunsets. I'll have to let my soon-t0-come pictures describe the incredible clouds, light, and environment we were in. On the last night, Mike, John, and I slept out on the roof. For the third night in a row, the stars were out and twinkling, and winds were near zero. It was a perfect night for it --still a bit cold, but well worth cold toes.


Marty, taken by Dylan of Workaholics, Inc.

A quick note --the Lakes sent me a link to the photos that the Discovery Channel photographers took while up on the summit this past week! There are some really great ones of Marty especially.

I promise to have my pictures up soon!


Reflection in goggles, Dylan of Workaholics, Inc.

I went skiing for the first time on Saturday with my aunt Di and uncle Tomm up at Attitash! It was really tough at first --went down an intermediate hill from the top of the mountain on my first run and fell the whole way down --but I was gliding my way down the easy hills by the end of the day! Thankfully Di and Tomm were super patient with me, giving up their chance to go on the good runs to just slide down the little ones and make sure I didn't stab myself with a pole. We saw people doing crazy tricks on the terrain park, and some great, great clouds from the lift. I'm definitely going to try to go again soon, and I'd really like to learn to snowboard...

Research Project

I think I've finally got my research project! Georgia Murray of the Appalachian Mountain Club has suggested that I help her run back trajectories on the PM 2.5 data which was measured on the summit, at Lakes of the Clouds, and down the road from the auto road base at Camp Dodge. I'll be using the Hy-SPLIT (Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory) model, which is available online through the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory. This is very cool because it's related to what I'll be studying this fall, atmospheric chem. I just found out in the past couple weeks that I've been accepted to both Oregon State and Portland State Universities. It's not going to be an easy choice! But here's a start on my academics... This is the abstract from the current version of the paper that Georgia's writing on the fine particulate matter data.

A 16-year comparison of fine particle and aerosol strong acidity at the interface zone (1,540 m) and within (452 m) the planetary boundary layer of the Great Gulf and Presidential-Dry River Class I Wildernesses on the Presidential Range, New Hampshire USA

Georgia Lee Murray, M.S., Appalachian Mountain Club; Kenneth Kimball, PhD; L. Bruce Hill, PhD; George A Allen, PhD; Jack M Wolfson, PhD; Alex Pszenny, PhD; Thomas Seidel, BS; Bruce G Doddridge, PhD

Abstract: Mount Washington, NH in the White Mountain National Forest, is flanked to the north-northeast and south by two Class I Wilderness areas, the Great Gulf and Presidential Range-Dry River Wildernesses, respectively. The Clean Air Act protects Class I area natural resource values from air pollution. Aerosol sulfate, a fine particulate component that is often transported long distances, is a known contributor to visibility degradation and acidic deposition. We examined summertime fine particulate aerosol mass and sulfate, strong acidity and ammonium concentrations from 1988 to 2004 on Mount Washington at two elevations, 452 and 1,540 meters (msl). The former site is within, and the latter at the interface of, the planetary boundary layer. Comparisons of sampling interval durations (10 and 24 hours), site vs. site, and
different sampling methods are made. We also examine the extent to which aerosol sulfate is neutralized. Ten hour (daytime) compared to 24 hour samples have higher mass and aerosol sulfate concentrations, however paired samples are well correlated. Fine mass concentrations compared between the 452 m and 1,540 m sites (standard temperature and pressure corrected) show a weak positive linear relationship with the later being approximately 34% lower. We attribute the lack of a strong correlation to the facts that the 1,540 m site is commonly at the interface of and even above the regional planetary boundary layer in summer and that it can intercept different air masses relative to the 452 m site. Sulfate is ~19% lower at the higher elevation site, but comprises a greater percentage of total fine mass; 42% compared to 35% for the high and low elevation site, respectively. Aerosol strong acidity was found to increase with increasing sulfate concentrations at both sites. At the high elevation site, elevated mass and sulfate concentrations are associated with westerly and southwesterly regional flows.

This is a nice little table summarizing all of the data measurement sites:

Week Two on the Mountain

This week, Ryan was sick. There were just the three of us, with Brian and Mike doing 12-12 shifts. Fortunately, the volunteers were really cool this week - Marion and Al Lake cooked, cleaned, and entertained us all week. They even let me try to make some alfredo sauce and guacamole (lesson learned: confirm recipe with mother before attempting guac).


Rime ice forming on the window of the weather room, looking NE.

I think that I've figured out a research project: Georgia Murray of the Appalachian Mountain Club has been working on a publication about fine particulate matter in the White Mountains, and would like me to help with running computer models on the data. More on that in the coming weeks....

Marion in the freezing fog, looking E toward the Stage Office

Rime ice on the rocks


Up to the tower --there are a couple flights of stairs like this going up to the top from the living space and weather room.


Al flying in the wind atop the tower. Also pictured are the pitot (wind speed and direction) and the wind vane (just wind direction).


Marty and his snake tunnel --he loves it when you drag him around in it. Sometimes. He's one of those cats. Awfully sweet when you have food!


Marion waving from the living room area. That's the library and entertainment system behind her, with the bunk rooms to the right of the picture on the wall facing the books. The kitchen is just to the left here.


Shepherd's Pie! Sink up there to the left, pantry to the right.


They let me help make alfredo! I put WAY too much cheese in there, but Mike opted for a high fat diet this week and helped us finish it off. I think Gus, one of the cat drivers, also made a significant dent in it. Quite literally, too --the stuff was the consistency of very cold butter. Yikes.


GO STEELERS! Mike, me, and Brian on the couch on the state park side of the building. We watched the first half of the game in here, then the cable went out. The obs doesn't have cable at the moment, so we ended up watching the rest upstairs on the computer. The chili bowls that Al and Marion made were tremendous, though!


A nice morning in the weather room.


Mike, me, and Marion in the weather room. The computer here is the one that the observers use most of the time. To the right of me is the communications equipment --the polycom that they use to do tutorials of the weather wall with people at the discovery center in the valley, etc. The weather wall is behind Marion here. It's got all of the barometers, anemometer readings, thermograph, and much more. To the left of me is the room where I usually work --there are two computers that are for interns and such. All the paper records are kept in there, too, and there's also an adjoined observer office where the audio recordings of the 36 hour outlook are made.



For some reason, our shift has been getting all of the edutrips --we had three this week. This particular day, there happened to also be a good group of hikers who'd reached the top getting a drink and resting for a few minutes in the main entrance. Hikers aren't really allowed in the building during the winter unless it's an emergency or they know someone inside and have prearranged a visit. It's supposedly not good to rest too much when you get to the top anyhow since your body needs to keep trucking in order to stay warm and moving. The guy in red toward the right is Mike.

On the way down, Al and I decided that we would hike the auto road rather than riding in the cat. We convinced the boss (surprisingly easily) that it was a good idea since I really didn't know the area very well --you can't see much of anything from the cat while going up or down. Check out these pictures! It's quite beautiful. The day was perfect for it, with the base at somewhere around 20F.


Learning to use the crampons --those spikey things on my feet. This ice is super slick without them. Behind me is the Tip Top House, the oldest existing building on the summit.


Looking back up the observatory (our part is on the far right --the rest is the State Park and visitor center).


Right behind me are Mt. Adams and Mt. Madison from left to right. The snow that we were walking on was about 4-5 feet deep, we think. We wore crampons, which he showed me how to use the day before. Quite the amazing gadgets.


I was trying to make it look like I was falling off, but unsuccessfully apparently. Behind me is Mt. Jefferson and the Great Gulf.


Looking ENE toward Crawford Notch, just before the East Snow Fields where I watched Mike snowboard my first week.


An AMAZING cloud!! Look at the definition.


Going down, down, down - the mountain to the right is Madison. The line going down it, I think, is the Madison Gulf Trail, leading into the Great Gulf. The whole edge there was ploughed by two of the cats this week in not-so-nice weather. Pretty incredible what they can do --the edutrippers were in the cat for 5-6 hours.


This is the first of the temperature gauges along the auto road that we saw. We think it's around 4400 feet.


Here's the one somewhere around 3200 feet...


...There are so many good references to the Christmas Story on this mountain.


We made it ALL the way down without the snow cat catching up to us! The crew had a long meeting with L.L. Bean reps and other agenda items this week, but it was still a victory for Al and I.


Check out those crampons!


Finally to the base. This is the building where the cats live and get worked on. There's also a conference room, shower, and some extra space that Al thinks could be used more....


We got a new cat this week --it has a dvd player, among other things. I didn't get to ride in it this week, but soon! The old one has been kept in really nice shape, but this one's a bit more secure and a lot more comfortable. It also technically seats more people.


Looking back up, from the base building. That might be one of the crags rather than the mountain itself, but you get the idea! It's way up there.

Today I also found out that I've been recommended by the Department of Chemistry to be accepted at Portland State, with a very nice tuition-paid teaching assistantship!!!

I just got back from a really amazing concert: a bluegrass concert at the Stone Mountain Arts Center in Brownsfield, Maine. The Del McCoury Band, as recommended by Mike (one of the observers who plays a mean harmonica), was fantastic!! The fiddler and mandolin player were SO fast and all of them were so together! A really incredible show and good company.